Pittsburgh Bridges: West End Bridge

The City of Pittsburgh is located where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River.  A lot of bridges had to be built in order to cross these rivers.  In fact, it's called the City of Bridges and it hosts the International Bridge Conference every year.

A nice thing about Pittsburgh is how successfully it made the transition from an industrial to a service-based economy. However, there hasn't been a major bridge constructed in the city for many years.

The West End Bridge crosses the Ohio River about a mile west of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in downtown Pittsburgh. Its a through arch, which means that the arch is above the deck.  The arch ribs are formed from steel trusses. The arch span is 780 ft (238 m) long and there are several truss approach spans.  The total length is 1980 ft (600 m) and inclides four traffic lanes and two walkways.  The bridge has handsome stone piers supporting the ends of the arch.  It was completed in 1932 by the American Bridge Company. 

Pittsburgh Bridges: West End Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.